Association for Middle Level Education

Association for Middle Level Education

Browse by Topic: Curriculum

A student-produced magazine celebrates middle level student voice.

In October 2015, a team of seven editors—all eighth grade boys at St. Christopher's School in Richmond, Virginia—met during lunch to compare two digital publishing platforms. They judged entries for the...

Bust worksheets and lectures with these activities you can reuse many times over.

We've all experienced it—you look up from your lesson to notice a virus spreading among your students. First one, then three, and before long, the whole class is overtaken. It's a zombie virus ... the virus of...

Recently, in response to a group of middle school students who asked about my journey to becoming a school leader, I recalled my 23-year journey to being awarded my Ph.D. in 2004 and my mother's sage advice.
I...

An old-fashioned radio broadcast encourages deeper reading.

Connections between students, connections between texts and students, and connections between texts and the real world are vital to student learning. In classrooms, one way to make connections is by linking people,...

Speed date a book? Let students give it a try!

Although it's been said that all learning should come from the teacher, sometimes it's the students who do the teaching. In my second year of teaching, Chad, an eighth grade student, taught me my first lesson.
Under...

Creating a balance during classroom discussions.

"Fine! Don't call on me!"
My student was obviously upset. I hadn't called on him during the entire lesson. I wasn't trying to be mean or purposely picking on him. I was experimenting with different lesson...

Why tracking based on ability means everyone loses.

Let's say we have two soccer teams. One is populated by all of the strongest, fastest, toughest, athletic students. These kids attend practice every day after school and work out on their own in the evenings and on...

Middle school voices are not always what their teachers want to hear.
Those voices can be high-pitched and rowdy, full of criticism and negativity, whining with complaint, or bent on distracting others, destroying...

Reaching and teaching all students requires an understanding of them inside and out.

If you are tired of dealing with negative student behaviors day in and day out, you are not alone—in fact, you are firmly in the center of the average teacher's experience. Still, managing difficult student...

One single event can change teaching forever.

With more than two decades of experience, I have seen my share of the unusual, but one event in one eighth grade class forever changed the way I think about instruction and grading. It lead me on a personal and...